By holding super-voting Class B shares, Page and Brin controlled 56% of Google as of last April’s proxy filing. The founders have seen their grip erode over the years as Google continued to issue Class A shares to finance acquisitions and pay employees with stock. Each Class A share carries one vote, while each Class B share carries 10 votes.

To solve the problem, Google created ”Class C” shares that are being issued at the beginning of April to shareholders of record March 27. These have no voting rights and, going forward, are the shares Google intends to issue for compensationand acquisitions. That will end the slow-motion dilution for Class B shareholders.

But take heart, existing shareholders: You aren’t losing any voting rights as a result. Since everyone — that includes Page and Brin — is getting a share of Class C for each share of Classes A and B, the proportional control over the company isn’t actually changing as a result of this move.

Here’s the math:

Say you hold 100 Class A shares today. At one vote per share, that entitles you to 100 votes. After the stock split next week, you will hold 100 Class A and 100 Class C shares. Class A shares keep their one vote, while Class C shares have none. So while your number of shares doubles to 200, you still have 100 votes. The same thing is happening for those holding super-voting Class B shares. And since it is much less likely Class A shares will be issued in the future, Brin and Page effectively put a floor under their voting control.

One more question. Will the stock split affect the bottom line? No. Per-share earnings, as usual, will be cut in half to reflect the doubling of outstanding shares, but investors’ overall share of profits don’t change. (Twice as many shares multiplied by half the per-share earnings equals the same proportional share of profits.)

The deal isn’t expected to close for some time, so until then Google will have to shift Motorola to a category dubbed “discontinued operations.” It makes for more difficult comparisons of earnings in some cases, but it signals good news to come for investors focused on the bottom line.

Specifically, while Motorola last year contributed $4.4 billion of revenue to Google, it also rang up around $1 billion in operating losses, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney. The losses don’t actually disappear until the unit is sold, but when it is that will be a nice boost to profits. Indeed, stripping out Moto’s losses boosts Mahaney’s earnings estimate this year for Google by 9%.